The Fourth Circuit's Biased, Ideological Decision

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On Friday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled against North Carolina’s voter ID law. According to the court, the law was passed by the state’s general assembly with “discriminatory intent.” The ruling also affects changes to North Carolina law impacting early voting and same-day registration.

Heritage legal expert, Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission and Justice Department counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights says that the court’s ruling in this case “is a biased, ideologically driven decision that misconstrues the law and misapplies the facts.”

Specifically, in this case the court overturned an almost 500-page district court opinion that carefully noted the facts in the case that showed the state’s voter ID law and other revisions to its election laws did not keep a single individual out of the polls; in fact, turnout – especially of minority voters – went up in the state.

In light of these facts, Spakovsky argues that the appeals court, “erroneously found an intent to purposefully discriminate when there was not a single iota of evidence in the case whatsoever of any discriminatory intent by the state legislature, and there was clearly no discriminatory effect.”